‘Futbolilits’ kids do the series a lot of good
When we heard that GMA 7 was launching a new teleserye about young football players, we made a mental note to watch its premiere telecast (before the evening news).
We felt that the effort to help popularize the sport in these parts deserve to be supported, because football is more “height-appropriate” to Filipinos, and thus less prone to sheer “colonial” imitation.
Our initial impressions:
We liked the storytelling’s brisk pacing, but were put off by the early introduction of a fantasy element that wasn’t necessary. Was this done because the series was about relatively young people, who are believed to dote on fantasy?
We don’t know about that, but the introduction of a “magical” pair of sports shoes was more of a distraction than a plus point.
Black magic
Later, it turned out that magic and fantasy were a key part of the series’ format. One of the show’s villains, played by Angelika de la Cruz, was made to marry the main villain (Paolo Contis), and promise that she would make life miserable for his arch rival in the sport (Raymart Santiago).
Boy, when she said she would use “black magic” to do this, she really meant it: To ruin Raymart and his future prospects, she came up with nothing less than a powerful and deadly tsunami! Don’t get on the bad side of this visage, if you can help it!
At the end of the show’s first telecast, we had mixed emotions regarding the story’s progress and prospects. We were still glad that it was helping make football more popular locally, and its sports sequences were appropriately lively.
On the other hand, the presentation was too fantasticating to promote genuine emotion and empathy. Raymart’s portrayal passed muster, but Paolo’s characterization was too broadly nasty. We’ve seen Paolo do better on some other shows, so the “heavy” attack may not be of his own devising.
As for female lead Jennylyn Mercado, her portrayal is even less creative, because she mostly just plays herself rather than a distinctly different character. She did better in the feature film “Rosario,” so it’s disappointing to see her so devoid of the acting enterprise here.
But while the adult actors do such generally “generic” work, the young leads are a heartening sight to behold. In a local show-biz field dominated by overloud, overacting little terrors—and errors—it’s such a relief to see three young talents who don’t act up a storm to amaze and astound viewers.
Naturally cute
Little Yogo Singh leads the truly talented threesome with his naturally cute (not acute or pa-cute) portrayal of a pint-sized kid who loves football even if most people think he can never be good at it.
We first became fans of Yogo’s precocious acting talent when we previewed Marilou Diaz-Abaya’s moving feature film about the Virgin of Peñafrancia (set to be shown in September). He plays Ina Feleo’s love child in the movie, and he bowled us over with his winningly natural, felt and precociously insightful performance.
It was obvious that Marilou had closely mentored him to come up with such an exceptional performance, but it was also clear that she had given him enough space and slack to “fill in the blanks” with his own youthful spirit and emotional truth.
Soon after, we saw the emerging young child star playing a substantial role on “Alakdana,” so we were happy to see that other producer-directors had taken cognizance of his obvious promise, and he was clearly on his way.
Performance ‘smarts’
Now comes “Futbolilits,” and it really is Yogo’s time to shine. As a most likely football star-in-the-making, he delights viewers with his unusual combination of performance “smarts” and believable emotions, which enables him to do well in both comedic and dramatic sequences.
Also doing well in “Futbolilits” is Renz Valerio as Yogo’s older protector. We noticed Renz even before this new show, doing good work as one of the hosts of a kiddie program.
We liked him then, because he didn’t shout and make porma to “entertain” viewers. He simply did his spiels intelligently and naturally, and left it up to viewers to decide whether they liked his work or not.
Well, we liked it a lot and made a mental note to cite Renz in a future article—this is it!
The third “Futbolilits” comer is a girl, Lenlen Friel, and she’s a natural charmer. She isn’t what you would call show-biz “pretty-pretty,” but she doesn’t have to be, because her impish charms and spontaneous performance alone carry her a long, long way. She doesn’t have to act all cutesy and pa-tweetums like so many little child starlets around, because viewers dote on her right from the start.
We hope that “Futbolilits” will be good for Yogo, Renz and Lenlen. They deserve to make it in the biz with their natural talent and lack of attention-calling gimmicks and push-button shticks. And, very definitely, they’re doing their new TV series a lot of good as well!
